


I Put The Pain In Your Neck (And You Put The Beat In My Heart)

by th_esaurus



Category: Formula 1 RPF, Rush (2013)
Genre: Casual Sex, Domestic, M/M, Nostalgia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-03
Updated: 2013-11-03
Packaged: 2017-12-31 09:53:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1030288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/th_esaurus/pseuds/th_esaurus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Don't mope like a goddamn teenager," Niki snaps. "You quit."</p><p>"I retired. God, that word makes me feel old."</p><p>"Yes, you retired. We all will someday. We'll do it because we want to live our lives again." Niki wants to look him in the eye, but James is still turned away. "So live yours."</p><p>James lies on the bed, and doesn't answer for a very long time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Put The Pain In Your Neck (And You Put The Beat In My Heart)

**Author's Note:**

> This is a lot more incredibly inaccurate RPF than it is a Rush fic, though I've categorised it as both. Hopefully it'll read well enough to people who've only seen the movie.

1979.

He's waiting for Niki at the airfield, smoking a cigarette greedily and standing two feet taller than the roof of his absurd car. He's had the Mini for as long as Niki's known him, and money and championships haven't replaced it. Niki can't discourage the rare display of frugality. James has his excesses, after all. But he can gripe and moan all he wants about the shitty legroom.

They don't embrace, and Niki flings his overnight bag into the backseat. James has a hangover behind his aviators.

"How's the air up there?" James chews out around his cigarette, raising his eyebrows.

"You look like shit," Niki replies tersely.

"Yes," James sighs, "And I fully plan to drink away this godawful headache." He cracks a smile, and it stretches the skin of his face, not as youthful as it once was. He's still in his thirties. They're both burnt out on the outside, now. 

Niki hasn't seen him in two months, and it's factual, not sentimental, to acknowledge he missed James.

The drive back to Baron's Court is a poorly disguised pub crawl. By the time they reach The Pear Tree, James has four pints in him and an armful of bottles clanging around in the backseat foot wells, ostensibly for home. One of them finds its way into his palm anyway.

"Get back in the car, Niki," he wheedles.

"You're drunk and you're an asshole."

"I'll drive like my Grandmother the whole way home, rest her dear soul."

"Fuck your Grandmother."

True to his word, James doesn't top ten miles an hour, hunched comically over his steering wheel, squinting at the road and bullishly ignoring the car horns that scream past them as they're overtaken on every straight. He gives Niki his beer to look after. Niki drinks it, laughs when James starts waxing lyrical about the feel of the wind in his hair, the romance of speed and the joys of the open road.

"Don't encourage me," James grins.

"I never do," Niki retorts, laughing still anyway.

He remembers, loosely, James walking back to their flat in 1971, all the way from Tottenham, because he was too drunk to get his keys in the fucking door of the Mini. He'd thumped on the door until Niki dragged him inside, pulled them both onto the acid-green carpet, and buried his face in Niki's curls, moaning and worrying about what would happen to his beloved old banger. He'd smelled of vodka and hash and the sole had come away from one of his shoes. More worried about the fucking car than his torn up foot.

He'd had a friend drive him back up there to fetch the Mini the next day, while Niki cleaned the blood flecks out of the carpet. Niki never had a road license in England. Still doesn't. A curious thing.

His laughter fades right out.

"Where did you go?" James asks him.

"Watch the road, don't watch my face."

"Yes, Mother."

"You've always been an asshole," Niki tells him, matter of fact.

"A refrain I hear on a daily basis," James mutters wryly; still dutifully driving at eight miles an hour.

*

Niki isn't angry at James for his abrupt retirement. He can't be; he hates hypocrisy, and he couldn’t deny if asked that he's been thinking about quitting the game. They both had godawful seasons in '77, and Niki's wondercar at Brabham was too short-lived to be anything but a wet dream. In truth, he's more disappointed that the battle is over, even if it long had been. Without James on the track, his heart isn't in it anymore. He hates hyperbole about the sport, but there it is.

He's lonely.

He does not tell James any of this. Instead he barks out that he hopes James isn't drowning in his own petty depression.

"Only at the bottom of bottles," James tells him cheerfully enough, "Although isn't that the same thing?"

He's fully drunk again now.

"Let's go bird-watching," he announces. "No innuendo."

"Why would I?" Niki scoffs. "You insinuate it well enough on your own."

James parks outside the pleasant greenery of Ravenscourt in what could best be called an abstract straight line, and fumbles blindly around the backseat of the car for his binoculars. The car's too small for the awkward angle, and pushes his hip against Niki's thigh.

1971\. James so drunk he couldn't undress himself. Niki managing to eke him out of his jeans. James had drooled in his sleep on Niki's collarbone. His hip pressed against Niki's thigh, his big hand clutching Niki's waistband like it was a buoy.

He doesn't manage to find his binoculars and they go for a drink instead. Get frowned at by the pub's quiet patrons, for James' rowdiness and Niki's foreign accent. "Englishmen are assholes," James jokes, in a poor German lilt; even poorer Austrian.

Niki drives the rest of the way because he'd rather be arrested than killed.

*

The house in Barons Court always feels too small for James. Low ceilings, a cluttered kitchen, the huge birdcages taking up vast swathes of space, and oversized sofas picked out by Suzy, left there in the curt mess of their split. James' betamax tapes lay strewn around the living room, sports recordings and action films and one or two pornos he can't summon the shame to hide. There's a flimsy piece of lingerie lying too conveniently in the hallway, and James picks it up deftly between his toes, flicks it up into his open hands, balls it, and tosses it away into the corner of the room.

He's always had a surprising dexterity, when drunk. Niki remembers playing tennis with him at midnight, stupidly, sneaking like little boys into the padlocked courts near their London flat. Always 1971. James had four pints of pale ale in him, and stripped down to his briefs in the chilly air, hopping from one foot to the other with his school-days tennis racquet and making chicken clucks and cat-calls at Niki. He'd beaten him three games out of five, and Niki had rewarded him two days later by finishing a clear second ahead in their silly F3 cars.

"You treat this place like shit," Niki says. It's a pointless observation, the kind he doesn't like making. James always feigns being obtuse and draws them out of him.

"Not all of us have a little lady at home to look after the place, you know."

"If you think Marlene's a neat little housewife," Niki says shortly, "then you don't know Marlene at all."

"Always wanted to get to know her better."

"Don't, James." It's a warning, and all the more prescient for its quiet shortness. They don't talk about Marlene unless she's present.

1977\. So recent. They all shared a fondness for swimming, and James hadn't bought any trunks. "We don't want him to feel left out," Marlene had said, smiling, slipping out of her dress.

James wrestles Niki's overnight bag from his hands, and takes it upstairs. Niki knows full well his guest room is down here.

*

Niki hates cooking but he hates English takeaway more. James has been living off the stuff, judging by the state of his overflowing bin, foil tins and greasy newspaper. He barks orders at James to fetch and carry, makes do with the stale vegetables and frozen beef James manages to scrounge up, and tries to remember how the kitchen staff made their _tafelspitz_. He has nothing decent to serve it with. It will taste like cardboard. He's going to make James feel like shit and force it down anyway.

James putters around while Niki is cooking, asking after their colleagues and badmouthing half of them like he's been out of the game for years, not months. He disappears upstairs and returns wearing just his briefs, moth-eaten slippers, and a thick cardigan that reaches his thighs. His chest and legs have always been bird-like and sinewy, and seems even moreso on his diet of booze, joints, and late night runs to dispel all his tense energy.

They look a right pair. People called James a ladykiller in 1975. Niki had once found a magazine that claimed he himself had a certain boyish charm, and James had ribbed him for weeks about it – "a certain rattish charm", he'd crowed all down the pitlane. What are they now? A drunkard and a lit match.

James is still blonde and tall and tanned, even when his voice is hoarse from smoke and his eyes are drawn and sleepless.

He puts his chin on Niki's shoulder, stooping down to reach, and wends his arms around Niki's waist as he tries to look purposeful at the stove. "Get off," Niki says, clipped. "I'm busy."

"Come on, put some heart into it."

"Fuck off, James. I didn't come here for this."

James steps back, runs his hand through his hair, and can't stifle a sigh. He doesn't ask why Niki came, and doesn't call him out on his lie either. So many things between them are inevitable.

One overcast summer night in '71. Niki's turn for the bedroom – they alternated week by week, both keeping all their clothes clinging together in the tiny wardrobe. James on the sofa with his companion for the night, loud and uncaring. James had crept into Niki's bed afterwards, smelling intimately of sweat and a woman's sex, and had lit them both cigarettes, leant over and pressed one to Niki's bottom lip before he could protest.

They fucked a lot that year, in the small hours. Eventually Niki started locking the door if James came home with girls, because he loathed the sloppiness with which James clambered in beside him when he was post-coital. He could at least have the decency to focus a little; James complained that Niki merely hated coming second.

It was a little of both.

So they started fucking before James went out on his nightly scouts. Pre-season testing.

Niki hands James a plate of meat and potatoes, and they sit eating from their laps in front of _The Generation Game._

"Niki," James says painfully, like he's about to announce someone's died. "I cannot possibly eat this."

"Shut up. Be grateful."

Still, he allows James to drown his beef in Heinz ketchup.

*

James runs Niki a hot bath, though it's far too late for it. The streetlights are flicking into life one by one through the slatted blinds, lending the bathroom their hazy, bleak quality. The tiles are all peaches and cream, and James runs his index finger along the grout, mutters about how he should rip the room out and start again. Niki wonders how many half-hearted DIY projects he's thought about. There's still an unfinished patio covering at the end of the garden, corrugated iron for the roof propped against the back fence, that James promised to build for his budgerigars. He's got time for it now, really.

They'd shared a lot of showers, when they lived together, mostly to save money. 1971. James had once or twice tried to squeeze a girl in the tiny shower room too. Breasts pressed up against Niki's back while he was trying to wash. The small, high whine she let out close to his ear, grabbing his shoulders to steady herself, as James thrust into her from behind.

He brings his backgammon board into the bathroom and sets it up while Niki strips, climbs into the water. James always liked his water too hot, and Niki's grateful for it now; it eases up the pressure around his scars. They're always tight around the wrist. Knot-like.

Niki prefers chess, the forethought and strategy. James doesn't have the tolerance for it. They play a few rounds of backgammon while Niki's bathwater cools to lukewarm, bitch about Wolf Racing's joke of a team. "I thought that bloody car was going to kill me," James mutters.

Niki hates drivers who blame their cars. He burst into flames in a Ferrari, of all things. But James has never been a poor driver. Niki can count on one hand the times James drove like an asshole, since the Nürburgring. 1976.

James alternates moving his pieces and distracting Niki from his move with clumsy fingers on his jaw and cheek. Not quite stroking, just touching there. Niki bats at him like he would a fly, but not with particular venom; he allows it when James' rough touch finds its way back to his face.

"I'm sure you mean well," Niki says tersely, "But scar tissue isn't the best for gentle fucking caresses, so if you could put your hands to better use."

He means it as an opt-in for James. Means it as a catalyst.

But James swears under his breath and gets up and leaves, mid-game.

A minute or two later, Niki can see cigarette smoke wending up from the back garden past the bathroom window. He washes briskly, lathers up his messy hair and holds his breath, plunging his head under the water once to muss it clean.

1973\. A hotel in the asshole of Switzerland. The rarity of a bath. James and Niki sharing again, like they had in London. Nothing frantic, this time. A bottle of beer dangling from James' right hand, a cigarette in the left; he'd passed it between the two of them, though Niki preferred the woodiness of cigarillos.

"You know, I'd rather like to fuck you," James had said, thinking himself romantic.

"Fuck _you._ "

"It's an option," James had shrugged. Their wet thighs slipped against each other in the narrow tub. James had leant forward and kissed him. Niki rolled his eyes. Kissed back, hard.

James is lying in bed by the time Niki dries off. He's still smoking, perhaps his second or third. The little bedside lamp is switched on, the curtains closed. When Niki had been here before, some years back, James had a corkboard in the bedroom – nothing so fancy as framed pictures – with newspaper clippings about his wins, his particularly spectacular crashes, even some of Niki's more impressive runs. It's been replaced with a poor reproduction of some masterly oil painting. Great danes and hunting horses.

"Why did you come here, Niki?" James asks, his gaze following the smoke trails up to the ceiling. He sounds exhausted; sober.

"To make sure you weren't fucking yourself over," Niki tells him. He's never seen the point in beating about the bush.

"What's the verdict?" James sighs.

"Don't mope like a goddamn teenager," Niki snaps. "You quit."

"I retired. God, that word makes me feel old."

"Yes, you retired. We all will someday. We'll do it because we want to live our lives again." Niki wants to look him in the eye, but James is still turned away. "So live yours."

James lies on the bed, and doesn't answer for a very long time.

1976\. Marlene reading out James' letter to Niki, both of them trapped in a burns unit in Germany. Her voice had stopped shaking.

"Come here," James says, dry and low. He stubs out his cigarette in an ugly glass ashtray; spreads his legs.

*

They fuck more than once. It's easier with James on his stomach, since neither of them can deny Niki's shorter. Easier for him to lie between James' open thighs, to wrap an arm around his chest and grip him tight at the shoulder, ballast for when he first fucks in.

"Christ," James growls. "Give a man a hand while you're at it?"

Niki tends to bite down all over James' nape and shoulders and James used to make sport of him for it, but they're past that now. They're both, arguably, past it.

Against his better judgement, Niki has always liked fucking James. Nothing so petty as power or position, but because he gets a deep satisfaction out of how much James likes it. His primal grunts, the way he can't keep his hands still, the same twitch he gets in the seat of a car, waiting for the wheel. He gives so much away, his charm and his company and his sex; Niki likes to see him take something back.

He comes with a low whine, and James gropes back at him, arches his back, drinks Niki in. Doesn't let him pull out for a good minute, even though James is still hard and wanting. Give, give, give.

He flips them over while Niki is loose and lazy, drags his prick from Niki's navel down between his thighs, thrusts in there. Niki's got enough of his wits about him to tense up, to make it tight for James.

"Jesus, Niki," he breathes, his head dropping forward onto Niki's chest, where it's smooth and unscarred. "Jesus. Jesus."

*

James darts downstairs naked and fetches up the cold beers they picked up that afternoon. He can't find a bottle-opener and uses his car keys instead.

"I couldn't do it anymore, Niki," he says, calmer now, matter of fact. It's rubbed off on him from Niki's bluntness. "Driving round in circles."

"Why should you? You had a shit car, a shit team, and you'd had your moment in the sun."

"How poetic."

"I'm serious."

"You always are, Niki."

1971\. It was a lighter year than most in the pool of his memories, floating nostalgic near the surface. He'd woken up once, in 1971, with James' arm flung around him. Both of them lying on their bellies, lined up all along the side, James' heavy arm across his back. They'd fallen asleep on each other sometimes, sure, drunk and hardy; but never woken up entangled. Niki had slid out from under James' arm before morning.

They drink their beer. They don't embrace.

But James' shin is pressed against Niki's ankle, shifting every now and then, just slightly.


End file.
